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Good afternoon, and welcome to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon, taking your calls. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian faith, we welcome you to call during this hour, and we can talk about them on the air.
If you call, please have your question ready. We’ve got a lot of people waiting. We pay about $100 a minute for airtime.
So, realize that if you call and once I put you on the air, you’re trying to figure out what your question is. You’re wasting precious time and excluding other people from asking theirs. So, have your question ready if you call.
And I shouldn’t have to say that. Obviously, by the time you get on the air, you’ve usually been waiting on hold for a while, plenty of time to formulate your question. In fact, I would expect you’d have your question before you dial the number.
But I’m just saying, it’s surprising sometimes that people will call and once they’re on the air, they say, well, I’m not really sure what I’m asking here. Well, wait until you are sure what you want to ask and then give us a call. That would give everybody a chance to be on.
Our lines are full at the moment. If you want to call a little later and catch an open line, the number to call is 844-484-5737.
These lines open up all the time through the show, so don’t think that you can’t get through today. Just call a few minutes from now and lines will be opening up. The number again 844-484-5737.
One announcement, as I had been all week and I will be next week, I’m speaking in various places in Washington state. And tonight, I’m speaking in Polsbo, Washington. And if you live over in that area and want to join us, but you don’t know where and when it is, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.
That’s thenarrowpath.com. And look under announcements and you’ll see all of the places I’m speaking this week and next week in Washington state. And the addresses are there and so forth.
So check that out. Tonight in Poulsbo. I’m going to go to the phones now and talk to Lana, calling from Ontario, Canada.
Lana, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Thank you so much. Your ministry is such a blessing. I have a question about repentance and remorse.
Can you explain it to us a little bit? I’m thinking about Judas, and I’ve listened to a lot of your messages on your website, and I guess I’m a slow learner. I’m just not getting the difference between Judas’ remorse rather than it being repentance.
I just don’t want myself and others to be caught in just remorse and not repentance properly.
Well, sure. Well, to repent, in the Greek, it literally means to change the mind. But of course, it’s not just generically changing your mind about just anything.
It specifically is repenting for your sinfulness, repenting of your rebellion against God, basically not having the same mind about it that you had before. So if you rebel against God or you live a life thinking that it doesn’t really matter whether you please God or not, or you feel that the main thing in your life is to fulfill your wishes and seek your own happiness and fulfill your own dreams, well, that’s the sinful attitude that has to be repented out. There has to be a change of mind, and that change of mind is very thorough going.
It’s not just saying, oh, I’m sorry I did this one thing. And that’s what Judas did, of course, when he hanged himself, he was sorry that he betrayed Christ, but it’s not just being sorry for one thing, it’s sorry for your whole orientation of self-will and replacing that change in your mind from that of one that thinks, I’m the one that I need to be looking out for, my will, my pleasure, my fulfillment, and thinking, no, obviously, that doesn’t make sense. Why should the universe care about me?
I’m nothing. And why should I care about me? I’m still nothing.
But God is something. And therefore, it makes sense for me to live for Him and for His plan and for His pleasure rather than my own. And when a person has that basic change of mind about things, it’s okay, it’s no longer I, but Christ, that’s going to matter to me.
That’s the change of mind that means repentance, and it changes your whole orientation about life in general. Now, there is such a thing as something less than that, which is remorse. And even the Bible gives a number of examples of people who have remorse but not repentance.
Judas being one of them, King Saul being another one. When he was told he was going to lose the kingdom, he had remorse. But what he had remorse about, of course, is the kind of thing that all, frankly, almost everyone in prison has remorse about their crimes.
Some of them no doubt have thought, well, crime is a bad thing. I don’t ever want to do that anymore. I should live a righteous life instead.
But most people in prison, for example, have remorse about their crimes, but it may not go any deeper than the fact that they are now stuck with the consequences of it. And they’re sorry they did it. They wish they hadn’t.
When people have foolishly gotten married to someone that didn’t make any sense for them to marry, or have given up their virginity in a situation that was inappropriate, you can’t get that back. And a lot of people have remorse for that. I’m sorry, I did that.
I’m stuck in this situation, and I can’t undo it, and I don’t like it. I don’t like the situation. And therefore remorse is an emotion of regret and sorrow over something in particular that you have done, but not necessarily about your whole course of life.
In fact, many people who have remorse, if they get a chance to go out and get a fresh start, they’ll just go out and do the same thing again, because they don’t really have a change of heart or direction or fundamental orientation in life. They’re just sorry about this one thing. And Judas felt really guilty, of course, when he realized that he had betrayed innocent blood and he knew he was not going to be able to undo that.
And the guilt of that was really bugging him. And so he went and killed himself because he knew of no other way to undo it. Now, you don’t kill yourself when you’re repentant.
Repentance, it doesn’t lead to death. Repentance leads to life. Paul said in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 7, that there’s a godly sorrow that leads to repentance and there’s a sorrow of the world that leads to death.
And true repentance does not lead to death. A person who is repentant may feel so badly about their sins that they wish they could die rather than go along with the guilt. But that’s not a mark of repentance.
That’s a mark of selfishly trying to escape by the last resort, the penalties and the guilt and so forth. Of a crime they now wish they hadn’t done. But that’s what Judas did.
He had that remorse. But he didn’t have what the Bible calls repentance. And in that respect, he’s like most people when they’re sorry for their crimes or sins.
They wish they hadn’t done it, but that doesn’t mean they’ve determined that they could live a life of obedience to God now.
So good. Thank you so much. Such a great explanation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Lana. Great talking to you. God bless you.
Bye now.
All right. Kerry in Texas is our next caller. Hi, Kerry.
Steve, we were in a Bible study this morning in Ephesians Chapter 4 talking about the different ones. And we got into quite a discussion about one hope and one faith, and trying to determine what the differences were. We came up with, there’s a lot of similarities, but we just struggled with it.
I’m wondering if you could give me your take on what hope is and what faith is there.
All right, I will. But I would also say this, that a lot of times when the Bible lists a bunch of things that are kind of in the same category, may be listing numerous sins in some cases, or in this case the various Christian virtues. A lot of times, although we’re very analytical, I think the writer sometimes is not trying to emphasize any distinctions between these things, but he’s more trying to swell the ranks of the things that are in the category.
Sometimes even using terms that’s hard to tell if they’re different in meaning from each other or not. It’s just trying to make a long list of things in a certain category. And there are no doubt differences in the things, but sometimes the difference is not what, you know, something that he’s interested in emphasizing, but rather he’s trying to point out in this case, for example, how many things Christians have in common that form the basis of our unity with all Christians in the spirit.
Because he says, of course, in verse 3, endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. And he says, because there’s only one body. Okay, so we’re not indifferent bodies, we’re one body of Christ.
So that alone is a reason to maintain the unity of the spirit. We were one body, we shouldn’t be at odds with each other. But we don’t only have that in common, we have a lot of other things in common.
And whatever differences we have, all Christians have these things in common. We were of the same body. We have the same spirit, the Holy Spirit.
We have the same hope of our calling. Now, the hope of our calling, I believe, is the hope of glory. Several times in scripture, Paul says and Hebrews also says, that the hope of the Christian is glory, which is in our case to be like Jesus.
John explains it that way. In 1 John 3, he says, Beloved, now we are the children of God. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him.
And we’ll see him as he is, he says, and everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself. So the hope of being like Jesus, that is what the glory is, the glory of our inheritance that we anticipate, that is our hope. Is the hope of becoming like Jesus, the hope of being glorified in his likeness.
That’s what our one hope is that all Christians have. And then of course, he talks about one faith, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. Now, although everything in this list is something that’s distinctive and not identical with the other things.
Again, I said, I don’t think Paul’s trying to make a list of differentiated things so much as he’s trying to make a list of similar things, things that all we have in common. And even if we could hardly distinguish between one and another, it helps to swell the list to make his point that we’ve got all this in common. And that’s the basis for the exhortation for us to keep the unity of the Spirit.
And he said, what’s the difference between hope and faith? Well, hope, of course, is focused on future things. Now, Paul said that in Romans 4.
He said, if we already have it, if we already see it, why would we be hoping for it? Hope is looking forward to future things that we don’t already have. And as I said, the hope of the Christian is that someday we will be like Jesus.
That’s our hope. Now, what is faith? Well, faith isn’t necessarily something directed toward the future.
Faith is directed toward a person. Faith is having confidence in a person, trusting somebody, relying on them, because they are faithful, that is, reliable, trustworthy. Because someone is trustworthy, we trust them.
Because they’re reliable, we rely on them. Because they are faithful, we have faith. Now, faith is trusting in God, of course.
God is the one we have faith in. And we all have that same faith or else we’re not Christians. The point he’s making is, of course, all the things he lists are defining of being Christians.
But because we’re all Christians and now, therefore, sharing these things, that makes us have a lot more in common of the things that really matter than any of the trivialities that might make us different from each other. And therefore, it’s a case for being unified, for behaving like we’re unified, for being unified in the spirit and in heart. So our faith is our confidence in God and in Christ.
Our hope is the anticipation of a future thing that has not yet happened. And so those are different categories.
Well, thanks, Dave.
All right, Carrie, thanks for your call. Good talking to you. Carolyn in Seattle area, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hi, thank you. That’s funny. Your first three questions, mine included, is on definitions of words, which brought up my thought of, can you recommend a book, a good Christian book for definitions?
Because I have five of them to ask you.
Well, you mean what do the words in the Bible?
Definitions of various words.
How do they do? Well, yeah, I mean, one thing that’s very convenient for most people is the Vines Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words. Vines is the man’s name, WE.
Vines is the author. And so it’s called Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. I’ve got that on my shelf and I’ve looked things up in it lots of times.
It’s more or less the same as a lexicon, but it’s not really set up like a lexicon. You look up the English word and then it tells you what the different Greek or Hebrew words are that are translated in the Bible with that word and then tells what each one means and what their nuances are.
Okay, you’re ready? Here we go. I’ve got five categories.
What’s the difference between and the connection of the Pharisees, Talmud, Judaism, Jews, and Kazarian Jews?
Okay, the Pharisees were a religious denomination in Israel. They were not very numerous, but they had, there were only about 3,000 of them, I think Josephus said, but they had an influence on the Jewish religion beyond disproportionate to their numbers. But the Talmud is a book.
Actually, there’s the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud. They were put together in different centuries, and I think the, if I’m not mistaken, the third and the fifth centuries. But the sayings in the Talmud are the interpretations and opinions of rabbis about religious subjects.
Now, these sayings and interpretations were current in the days of Jesus, although they were not written down. They were what were called the traditions of the elders. And rabbis from earlier than Jesus’ time had made rulings on different subjects, religious subjects, expressed opinions about them.
They didn’t all agree with each other, but often the Talmud will say, OK, this rabbi says this, this rabbi says that. But the idea is the Talmud is simply the codification and the written publication of these formerly oral traditions. The rabbinic traditions were passed along orally for hundreds of years and finally written down in the Talmud in the early centuries after the time of Christ.
But even though they weren’t written down in the time of Christ, these traditions were known and passed along. So the Pharisees were, unlike other parties of the Jewish religion, in that they were very devoted to these traditions of the elders, these what’s now in the Talmud. The Sadducees didn’t care about that.
The Essenes didn’t care about that. There were other groups of Jews who just didn’t really care about the traditions, the elders, Jesus being one of them. He didn’t care about them either.
And that’s why he was criticized in Matthew 15 and the parallel in Mark 7. And Jesus turned around and criticized them for putting those traditions on the level with the word of God, and even keeping the traditions at the expense of keeping the word of God. So these traditions now are what we call the Talmud.
Now, Judaism is a Jewish religion, and there’s different branches of that. Biblical Judaism was that which Moses gave, and it was based on the tabernacle or the temple, and animal sacrifices and things like that. That Judaism doesn’t exist anymore.
There’s no more Biblical Judaism. But there’s Talmudic Judaism, which is based on the Talmud. And that’s what we call Orthodox Judaism.
There’s also two other somewhat more liberal branches of Judaism today. There’s what’s called conservative Judaism, which isn’t as conservative as Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Judaism is the most conservative.
Then conservative Judaism and reform Judaism, those are both slightly more liberal forms of Judaism. But I would imagine that we would have more in common with the Orthodox Jews than with the more liberal Jews. But on the other hand, the Orthodox Jews are Talmudic, and we aren’t.
We don’t believe in the Talmud. And therefore, Orthodox Judaism, some of its leaders are quite proud to say that they are the modern-day successors of the Pharisees, because the Pharisees were the defenders of the rabbinic traditions in the first century, and Orthodox Judaism follows those same traditions in modern times. So when we say Judaism, if we’re talking about Orthodox Judaism, we’re talking about essentially Talmudism, and which is the same as the Pharisees.
So those first three things you mentioned are all kind of the same. Now, you also mentioned the word Jew. Now, the word Jew can refer to a person who practices the Jewish religion, regardless of their ethnicity, because a Gentile can be, the word can be a proselyte, can be converted to Judaism.
And even though he’s not descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at all, he’s a Jew because he holds the Jewish faith. A famous example in my parents’ generation was Sammy Davis Jr., the African-American performer who converted to Judaism. And he spent the rest of his years as a Jew, but he didn’t have any Jewish blood.
He was a Jew by faith and that’s a Jew. But there’s also people who are Jews by race, and they may or may not be religious Jews. In fact, most American Jews by race are atheists.
They’re not observant religious Jews. In fact, most of the Jews in Israel today are not observant Jews. Only 20% of the people in Israel are observant Jews.
The rest are secular. So you can be a Jew because you hold the Jewish religion regardless of your race, or you can be a Jew because you’re ethnically Jewish, regardless of your religion. It can be a religious description or an ethnic one, and it can be either one.
Now, the word Khazarian, I think is the fifth word you used. The Khazarian’s refers to being descended from the Khazars. And I was talking about this on a show just the other day here.
There’s a theory that many of the Jews of Northeastern Europe, the ones that we call Ashkenazi Jews, and the Jews themselves would use the term Ashkenazi for them, that they’re really descended from a mixture of Jews and Gentiles who were descended from people in a land called Khazar or the Khazaria. And the Khazars were Gentiles who converted to Judaism as a largely the whole nation, it is thought. And so they, you know, Jewish people, real Jewish people moved there to be in a sympathetic country rather than persecuted.
And they no doubt intermarried and so forth. And so that, and that was many centuries ago. So that now the modern Ashkenazi Jews, one theory is that they’re very largely Khazarians and not, not necessarily Jewish.
In all likelihood, although I don’t know for sure, in all likelihood, they’re probably, most people are probably mixed, probably have some, some Jew and some Gentile in them. And that’d be true simply by due to the fact that Jews have married Gentiles throughout history. And therefore, obviously, there’s been a lot of mixing of the races.
So that’s what those five words mean. Thank you for your call. Ben in Texas, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, go ahead.
Okay. Good talk to you. Thanks for taking my call.
The question that I have is, I heard this Jewish Christian guy saying that supposedly the word we use for God and Jesus comes from a Celtic origin, which refers to demons, and that the real word for God should be used would be Yahusha and for Jesus should be Yahusha.
The man is a fool, okay? The man is a fool. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The name for God is simply a generic word for an object of worship. And when we talk about Yahweh, the God of Israel, he’s the one that we refer to as God. He’s the father of Jesus Christ.
Now, the name Jesus did not come from any pagan names. I’ve heard some of these silly people say, Jesus comes from Yezus, which is a hooray for Jesus. I mean, the person who says that has got to be the stupidest person speaking on the subject.
They have absolutely no knowledge of anything. First of all, the words Ye doesn’t mean in any language other than English, what we mean by Ye, you know? And so to say Yezus or phrase Zeus, it wouldn’t make any sense in any other language.
But the name Zeus is not in any way related to the name Jesus. It is true that the Greek form of the name Jesus is pronounced Yezus. But that’s a transliteration of the Hebrew word Yeshua.
The Greek language has no sh sound in it, but it has no sound for sh. And so when the name Yeshua is translated into Greek, it’s Yezouv, and the s at the end is simply something that happens sometimes with Greek names. Elijah becomes Elias and so forth in Greek.
But, and Judah becomes Judas in Greek. So these are familiar cases. And so Yeshua becomes Yezous in Greek.
And it has no relevance to any paganism, no demons, doesn’t have any relation to Zeus. It’s just some idiots apparently, who don’t care if they tell the truth or not. They just got an idea and said, hey, that makes sense to me.
I’m going to present that as if it’s true. And then there’s people apparently equally idiotic who say, well, if he says so, I guess I believe it. But that is absolutely nonsense.
Right. Yeah, because the correlation he did with Jesus was Isis or something which is a Celtic demon, and God was, it doesn’t really start, but it starts with a G or something like that, which is another Celtic, you know, demonic deity.
All right.
And supposedly, that’s the English translation.
Yeah, let me settle that for you. Let me settle for that. He has no idea what he’s talking about.
Okay.
I appreciate your call, though. Thank you. We have a break to take, but we have another half hour coming, so don’t go away.
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Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for an hour, excuse me, a half hour more. We are on an hour, but we have one half hour left.
So that’s enough time for you to call if you want to. If you want to call in with questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can also call to disagree with the host. We welcome that as much as as any questions you might have.
We have a few lines open now. That wasn’t the case a half hour ago. It is now.
And if you want to get on, this is a good time to call. The number is 844-484-5737.
That’s 844-484-5737.
Our next caller today is Nick from Carson City, Nevada. Nick, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi. Thank you. Hi, Steve.
I have recently, I go to two churches. But one of the churches I go to really agree with a lot of the stuff. The main preacher teaches.
He’s not a Calvinist. He’s not dispensational. Got pretty good views on baptism, not as like far off as the Church of Christ who takes it pretty legalistically.
But I really like where he’s at. But he mentioned in a Bible study a couple of days ago that he, you know, he wouldn’t go to a church that didn’t serve communion every week, but that he is open to the idea of women teaching over men, women being elders, women being deacons. And me and my wife, my wife meet even more than me.
We left a church because when the senior pastor left, the person who took over was a single lady that thought she was going to be the next pastor. And a lot of people mass exodus that church at that point. So I just wanted more of a moderate view because I know you kind of look at all sides of things instead of going to an echo chamber to kind of get my question answered.
Well, yeah, I mean, it sounds in general that the church you’re talking about is theologically pretty sound in ways that I consider theology, but it is true. I would disagree on the matter of women as pastors and elders because, well, because Paul disagreed with it. I’m not really at liberty to write new scripture.
I’m just, my obligation is to teach what’s there. And no one can deny what’s there. Paul said he didn’t let women in that role in 1 Timothy chapter 2 and if he didn’t, well, then I wouldn’t recommend it either.
Now, what I would suggest, I guess the church you’re going to doesn’t have any female elders yet, right?
Not at this point. I mean, he just says he’s open to it in the, if society would allow it because he says that it just gives qualifications in the two spots for men as pastors, but it doesn’t straight deny women. And I was like, well, I don’t know.
That’s not quite true, not quite true actually because Paul, though he doesn’t mention qualifications for women only for men, but one of the qualifications for a man is that he’s got to be a husband of one wife, and he’s got to govern his house well. And that Paul makes it very clear in many passages, that’s the husband’s position. He’s the head of the house.
He’s the head of the wife and so forth. So Paul says that the man shows himself qualified to be an elder by the fact that he has already shown himself to be a good head of his household. And a wife may be a good woman, but she’s not the head of a household, at least not in Paul’s view.
And so Paul felt like an elder should be married, and specifically married to a wife, and that he should be the head of a household. And it’s the success he has in managing his household that demonstrates that he can be trusted to manage the church. So I think that makes it pretty clear he’s talking about men.
And of course, it’s just before that, of course, those qualifications are found in the third chapter of First Timothy. But at the beginning of the third chapter, at the end of the second chapter, remember Paul did not divide his letters into chapters. That was done later.
Just before he started talking about the qualifications for elders is when he said, I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over the men. And so that sounds like an elder’s role he’s describing. He said, I don’t let women do that.
But here’s the qualifications for those who can. A husband of one wife and so forth. So, I mean, I’m not a misogynist, and I’m not saying that a woman in no case could be good at it.
I mean, I don’t think women are called to be soldiers, but a few women might be good at it. I don’t know that women really are the best demographic from which to choose corporate executives, partly because executives typically have a certain temperament that most women don’t have. You might find some women that make very good corporate executives, and very good soldiers, and police women, and some who might be very good at the things that an elder has to do.
But the question is not, can you find a few women who are good at it? The question is, is that what God is calling them to do as women? And the Christian woman will not be concerned with, well, you know, why can’t I do everything that I want to do?
Well, no Christian thinks that way. Christian men and women don’t think that way. Christian men and women have denied themselves and taken up their cross to follow Jesus.
If they haven’t done that, they’re not a Christian yet, the Bible says. So, if a woman is in fact a Christian, she’ll never have the attitude, well, I should be able to do whatever I want to do. I’m qualified.
Why should a man only be allowed to do that? No, a Christian woman’s attitude is, speak, Lord, your servant hears. Be it unto me according to your will.
Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. Whatever God wants is what I want. Do you have a word for me about this Lord?
And if a woman is wondering whether she should be a pastor or an elder, he does. He has a word about that. So, I think that any claim that the Bible is unclear on that is only unclear in the mind of someone who really doesn’t want to see what is clearly said, and they’re looking for ways to make it vague, which it is not.
But I would talk to the pastor if I were you, and say, listen, you know, I have been going to this church for a while, and I really quite like this church. But I left the church partly because they had a woman in leadership, and I follow Paul in this matter. And I respect a church that follows Paul.
I respect a church that follows scripture. I’m not saying that a church can’t have some good aspects about it, even if they do some things differently than what the scripture says. But why do things differently than the scripture says when you could do them the way the scripture says?
I’ve never understood this. It’s like when I watch a movie based on a Bible story, and they change stuff gratuitously. I think the real story is better.
The story in the Bible is better. The movie, every way it changed the Bible, it made the story worse. What’s so hard about just doing it the way the Bible has it?
For some reason, people just want to be creative. Well, we can innovate this, we’ll change a little bit, but it doesn’t hurt. Well, I’m just not one of those kind of innovators.
I want to be part of a congregation that’s worshipping Christ and trying to follow Christ. I’m going to be one that where they’ve got a pretty strong conviction that they should do what the Bible says. And so I don’t condemn a church that has women pastors.
I just think that’s not the one for me because the church I want to go to is the one that follows scripture. If they say, well, we don’t have to follow scripture, or we can reinterpret scripture so that this isn’t wrong. I think, yeah, but I’d rather be at a church that actually does what the Bible says.
And, you know, I’m not going to condemn people who have a disagreement. And I would tell you, Pastor, you know, I’m glad we don’t have any women elders now, because if we ever have any, I’ll be probably one of the people who has to find another church. Just let him know that.
And maybe he’ll think twice about, you know, if that matter comes up and maybe we’ll do it. Just say, listen, I’ll just let you know right now, we follow the Bible. We can’t find any way in the Bible to justify female elders of the church.
And so, we like the church, but if it happens to go that direction, I’m afraid we’ll have to look for another one. Just keep that in your mind, Pastor. All right.
Thank you for your call. All right. Let’s talk to Tony from Phoenix, Arizona.
Hi, Tony.
Hey, Steve. This is Tony. Thank you for accepting my call.
And God bless your ministry. I have a question. I’m sorry?
I said thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. God bless your ministry. I have a question.
I sat down with a pastor probably about a month ago, and I communicated with him my desire to help start a ministry as far as helping people in different things. And if I could have his support in that, not starting a church or anything like that, but just maybe a Bible study, helping people that need the word of God. His argument with me is that I wasn’t being faithful in the tithes, and I heard him out.
And I’m really looking for understanding if tithing is really something that is mandatory in the New Covenant, and is it something that can bring curses in our lives if we’re not obeying the tithe?
No, the purpose of the tithe was to support the staff of the Tabernacle, the Levites. That’s where the tithe went. So, you know, about maybe about a twelfth of the population of Israel was Levites, and the other eleven twelfths were supposed to support them, because the Levites were full-time staff at the temple.
Now, they weren’t the preachers. They were just the ones who tore down the Tabernacle when it had to move and set it back up, and they kind of dispensed with the body parts of the animals that weren’t burned, and they had all kinds of duties, but they were full-time and they had to be supported, and that’s what the tithes were for. Now, we don’t have the Tabernacle anymore.
We don’t have any lead lights anymore. So, if someone says we still have tithes, we have to say, well, why? What is it, since the tithes were for a certain purpose, and that purpose doesn’t exist anymore, why do you think we still have them?
Especially in view of the fact that the New Testament talks a great deal about money, about giving and things like that, but it never mentions tithes, which is interesting because if we should tithe, with all that talk about money and stewardship and so forth, seems like somewhere Jesus or the Apostles or someone would mention tithes, but they’re part of the Old Covenant, which is why the New Covenant never mentions them. You know, at our website, thenarrowpath.com, there’s a tab that says Topical Articles, and I wrote an article about tithing many years ago and it’s posted there. You can download it if you want to.
It’s called Is Tithing for Christians? And the answer is no, no, it’s not. Actually, something more demanding is, tithing simply meant you give God what is His, which is 10%.
The other 90% is yours. That’s the Old Testament. The New Testament, none of it is yours.
It’s all God’s. I mean, God may want you to use it for your needs and so forth. You’re a steward.
You’re a steward of God’s things. And therefore, paying your rent and paying for your food and your car and the things you need, support your family, those are part of God’s desires for you. And therefore, his resources can be used for those things.
But you use them not as your own, but as things that you belong to your master and your master is providing these things for you. And what is not used for the necessities, then you have to decide, well, what does God want done with the rest of this? So, it’s all God’s, whereas under tithing, only 10% was God’s.
And therefore, to my mind, if a church teaches tithing, they’re compromising on the New Testament. They’re not expecting as much as God expects in Christ.
Okay. Well, thank you so much, Steve. I do appreciate that.
I’m just looking for some more understanding on that. That’s great information right there.
Sure. And if you’re not tithing, I don’t know how that would have anything to do with you being qualified to teach a Bible study or things like that. I mean, unless you’re teaching people to tithe.
Yes, sir. I had a real desire just to open up a Bible study in my community and to reach. There’s a lot of broken families in my area, so I was looking for his support, but that was an issue with me wanting to be able to have that support from the church, you know?
Yeah. You are the Tony who is a chaplain, right?
I’m not a chaplain, no sir.
Okay, there’s another Tony in Phoenix that is, and I thought you might be him. Okay. Well, you can serve God in other ways.
That’s fine.
Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Steve. God bless you.
Okay?
Okay. God bless you, Tony. Thanks for your call.
All right. Cindy from Massachusetts is next. Cindy, welcome.
Hello. I have three quick things. Pontius Pilate, is he condemned to hell for the judgment of making Christ be crucified?
If he never repented, yes.
But he can’t repent. That’s history was supposed to happen.
That Christ was supposed to be crucified.
Yeah. But that and Joseph was supposed to be sold into slavery, too. But that didn’t mean his brothers were innocent.
The crime of selling a brother into slavery. Yeah. I mean, God allows things to happen when he wants them to happen, including things that bad people do, but the bad people do them are still bad.
But a bad person who does a bad thing can repent of doing it afterwards. So, yeah, he can repent. I don’t think he did, but he could.
Right. Okay. So basically, it was up to the community that arrested him and had him prosecuted and put to death.
So he washed his hands of it. So maybe he did repent, but either he or they’re well, he might have.
But I mean, I don’t know that washing his hands was true repentance. But we don’t know. I mean, he lived.
Remember Pontius Pilate lived beyond the story of him in the Bible. And who knows what he did later.
Okay. And then my next quick question is, does Christ, when he rose from the dead, did he still have the marks in his wrist and in his feet, in the crown, the thorns from the crown? Was he still injured looking or did he have a new body?
Well, his body was glorified, but he still did have the scars. We know that because he invited Judas, the steward, to put his fingers in the wounds in his arms and his hand into the wound of the side. So yeah, Jesus did have the scars still.
Okay, sorry. And one last question. I was just wondering why there are some men who sound extremely feminine and act very feminine?
Why that would happen? Why would God allow that to happen? They get persecuted and they might be completely innocent and not be homosexual, but have feminine tendencies.
Yeah, I would say that everybody has their own characteristics, and men don’t all have the same amount of testosterone, for one thing. I sometimes wish I had more. I’d like to be able to grow a better beard.
I can’t grow a very good beard. My voice is not as low as I wished. You know, some people think I look like Sam Elliott, but they’re disappointed when I open my mouth because I don’t have his voice.
And I’m disappointed too. I’d like to have his voice too. But the thing is, you know, we don’t all get what we want.
Now, I would say that there are men who have a lot more testosterone than me, and they got a lot more hair on their face, and a lot deeper voices, and more musculature, and so forth. I could wish otherwise about myself. In fact, I sometimes do.
But there are also men who have even less than I have. And their voice may be a bit higher. They may have, you know, they may be more delicate looking.
They may have been treated delicately when they’re young. And so they kind of are, you know, I mean, I don’t know. There’s different things that can contribute.
Some of them are genetic, I’m sure. And some of them are probably have to do with the way they were raised. But some men are definitely more effeminate in their affectations.
Now, I think that a lot of those men are men who later opt for a gay lifestyle, partly because they come off a lot more like females than men, and they might get persecuted for that. And they might find that the gay community is more receiving of them or something like that. So, I don’t know.
I can’t answer for any given case, but I would say that some men are more and some are less masculine, and some are more and some less feminine. And some of us are kind of right in the middle there and would like to be more of the former. Hey, I appreciate your call, Cindy.
Thanks for joining us. Let’s talk to Denise from California. Denise, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Okay. I have two questions. The first one is a statement about the person that called recently about women ministering in churches.
I know Paul in Corinthian did say that women should be silent and should not teach over men, but also Paul had a couple of women where he spoke of in the Bible in Romans. What is it?
Romans 16?
Yeah, where, you know, he said, Phoebe was considered like a deacon, and another woman, he even sent with a letter of introduction that whatever she asked them to do, because she was a co-laborer in the church. And we all know that Jesus’ resurrection, he, the first person that he sent to go tell the good news was Mary Magdalene. So, and that’s what we’re all supposed to do, is spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is what he posed to Mary Magdalene.
But then I also have a question.
Now, that’s not what elders do. Now, that’s not what elders do. Elders don’t spread the gospel, they shepherd the flock.
And, but that’s what a deaconess does too.
Is shepherd a flock?
No, no, a deacon, a deacon, no, a deacon and a deaconess. The word deacon is from the Greek word diaconess, which means servant. And the deacons were not the preachers.
They were the servants who, for example, initially they helped to distribute food to the poor. Of course, there’s a lot of practical servanthood things that need to be done around a church, and the deacons are responsible for those things. The elders are the ones who teach, at least in the Bible they are.
And the elders are the ones who shepherd the flock. Now, we can find a bunch of different ministers. We can talk about evangelists, we can talk about apostles, we can talk about elders, we can talk about deacons, we can bring deaconesses.
And if we just assume, well, there’s only one kind of ministry, and all these names kind of refer to that ministry. So, there’s only one thing. No, there’s not only one thing.
There’s lots of ways that people serve God. There’s lots of different positions. Paul said there’s at least 15 different gifts in the spirit that he recognized.
And one is teaching, for example, one is leading, one is prophesying, one is helping, one is giving, one is showing mercy. These are different ministries that different people have. To say that a woman is a deaconess, yeah, I agree with that.
She was a servant. She played a servant role in the church. We have no evidence that the deacons were the preachers in the church at all.
They didn’t pastor the church. The elders did that. Now, what we were talking about in the previous phone call is shepherds, which we would call the English word is pastors today.
But the ones who were the shepherds in the Bible were the elders. Like I said, even though there’s different names for different offices, sometimes there’s different names for the same office. The word elder is from the Greek word pres buderas, which means an older man.
But it’s used interchangeably with the word episkopos, which means an overseer. And the leaders of the church are sometimes called overseers, sometimes they’re called elders. And sometimes both terms are used of them in the same passage, like in Acts chapter 20 and verse 28, or in 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 1 through 4, the elders are called overseers.
Sometimes only overseers are mentioned, sometimes only elders are. And even the word pastor belongs to that same person, because the overseers and elders are told to shepherd or pastor the church. In Acts 20 and verse 28, Paul tells the elders, also calling them overseers, that they are to pastor or shepherd the church of God.
Peter says the same thing to the elders, who are also called overseers there, and he tells them to shepherd the church of God. So, shepherds, that’s what the word pastor means, and elders and overseers are all quite interchangeable terms for the same office. But deacons are not the same thing, evangelists are not the same thing.
And I agree with you that many women, every woman is in ministry, so is every man. They’re just not pastors and elders, and most men aren’t either. That’s only one ministry.
Everybody has a ministry. Everyone is called to serve God, but each one has a different gift and a different calling, and there would be a different label for what they do. So, you know, when we talk about should women be pastors or elders, this is something that the Bible says no.
But can women be evangelists? Can women be deacons? Absolutely.
Can they be servants? Yes. Can they have gifts of helps and giving and showing mercy?
Absolutely. And in fact, they can even have gifts of teaching. But Paul told, in Titus chapter 2, told the older women to teach the younger women.
And so, you know, they can even have gifts of teaching. But the role of pastoring is specifically described as belonging to only men. And not all men, only some men who met some pretty strict qualifications.
So I agree with you about women being in ministry. I just don’t agree about them being pastors. I appreciate your call, though.
Thank you for weighing in. Albert from Walnut Creek, California. Welcome.
Hello there, Steve. Can you hear me?
Yes, quickly. We only have a few minutes.
Well, I was going to ask about Matthew chapter 10, verse 5, where Jesus says, go nowhere among the Gentiles, and do not enter the town of the Samaritans. But rather go to the little sheep of the house of Israel. And I’m wondering, where do the, quote, Jews that lived in that area, where do they fall into?
Were they not mentioned, or are they lumped into Gentiles and Samaritans?
Oh, no, they were the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He said, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Don’t go to the places of the Gentiles.
There were basically only two racial categories here. You were either Jewish or you’re a Gentile. And in fact, today, that’s how the terms are used also.
A person who’s a Gentile simply is someone who’s not a Jew. So he’s telling the disciples, this is when he’s sending them out two by two, twelve of them two by two, on a short term outreach to various cities in Israel. He says, don’t bother going to the Gentile territories, just go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, that is to Jewish people.
And so Jewish people were…
How do you reconcile with the Jewish people that killed Jesus in those days?
Well, it’s true, they did.
So once you have told people to not go to the people that have killed me or about to kill me, they go to the ones that didn’t.
Well, you know, Jesus, his whole ministry was to the Jewish people. That doesn’t mean that the Jews didn’t kill him. All the prophets in the Old Testament, they were sent to the Jewish people too, but the prophets, the Jews killed them too.
The fact that you preach to someone doesn’t mean they’re not going to kill you. But Jesus’ ministry as the Messiah, he was the king of the Jews, he was the king of Israel, and he went to his people. And he preached his kingship to them, but they, you know, they killed them.
So there’s no, you know, both things are true. Hey, I’m out of time. I wish I wasn’t.
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